cruise missiles

9/11 Simplified

Yes, Virginia, there really were hijackers on the 9/11 planes—but not the ones we were told

(Updated with an addendum on 7-28-17)


This post is not intended to be taken dogmatically; I do not insist that its conclusions are correct; they are just presented for consideration.

In this post, though they have already been much discussed and debated within alternative media, I’ll address three major components of the 9/11 controversy: (1) what brought down the Twin Towers; (2) what initially struck the Towers; and (3) what happened to the original planes and passengers.

However, there is a valid complaint often voiced in the Truth Movement, which runs like this: “I really don’t care how 9/11 was done and I’m tired of all the infighting about this. What really matters is, we know the government’s story is bogus, so we need to focus on identifying the criminals and bringing them to justice.”

I consider this a very legitimate grievance. But I don’t think we can separate “who” from “how.” When a prosecutor presents his case in a courtroom, he doesn’t name a crime’s perpetrator without describing how the crime was carried out. Nor does he present the jury with the crime’s details and methodology without identifying the suspect(s).

So let’s tackle both how and who, and we’ll start with “who,” because doing so clarifies a lot of “how.”

The Who

What’s wrong with the following math equations?

3 + 3 = 68
98 – 7 = 2
58 X 7 = 35

What’s wrong, of course, are the 8s. Take away the 8s and each equation reads correctly.

I believe that, when it comes to resolving the mystery of how 9/11 was executed, the Truth Movement suffers from a major “8” (in addition to any individual doses of cognitive dissonance that have been deliberately sprinkled in). I believe that “8” is:

9/11 was an inside job.

I believe a far more correct rendering is:


To understand this, it may be helpful to compare Israel’s vicious 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. It is well understood that President Lyndon B. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara fully cooperated, by twice recalling U.S. fighters that the Sixth Fleet had sent to rescue the Liberty, and later by ordering a cover-up. However, at the physical operational level, the attack was carried out by Israelis, not by Americans in an “inside job.”

OK, but what’s the evidence that Israel was behind 9/11? By far the best summary I’ve seen is the WikiSpooks post 9-11/Israel Did It. (Incidentally, as many of my regular readers know, I’m half-Jewish on my father’s side, so knee-jerk charges against me of “anti-Semitism” can be stuffed in the appropriate place.)

A sampling of highlights:



• Quoting Wikispooks: “The company that ran airport security at all three airports where the alleged hijackings originated was Huntsleigh USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of ICTS International and owned by Ezra Harel and Menachem Atzmon —both Israeli Jews.”


• Supported by funds from Israel’s government, Zim Israel Navigational was the world’s ninth largest shipping firm. It had its American headquarters in the World Trade Center—until about two weeks before 9/11. Zim then moved its offices and employees to a new building, claiming rent was cheaper there.

• The 9/11 Commission’s executive director was Philip Zelikow, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen. Why should anyone with sworn loyalty to a foreign nation be entrusted with such a position?

• On 9/11, the chairman of George W. Bush’s Defense Policy Board was Richard Perle, whom the National Security Agency had caught spying on the U.S. for Israel in 1970.

• On 9/11, employees of the Israeli instant messaging company Odigo received messages two hours before the attack, warning them not to be in the World Trade Center.

• Ptech, a software firm linked to Israeli intelligence, had provided vital software being used by the FAA, FBI, and U.S. armed forces on 9/11.

• On 9/11, seated in row 9 of Flight 11 (directly behind “Mohammed Atta”) was Danny Lewin, a former captain in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), and who served in the Sayeret Matkal, which specializes in counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and assassination. Lewin could bench-press 315 pounds and “was trained to kill terrorists with a pen or a credit card, or just his bare hands.”2 In 2000, he had himself photographed in front of panels resembling the Twin Towers, wearing a Swatch Watch whose model name was “Hijacker.” The hour, minute and second hands were all on the “11” and the date was set to the 11th, even though the picture was taken on the 10th.

The odds against all four time indicators being on “11” are more than 20,000 to 1. Times the odds of the watch model being named “Hijacker”: unfathomable.

That’s just a small sampling of the evidence that Israel did 9/11. When police detectives try to solve a murder, among the first questions asked is: Who benefitted from the crime? In 9/11’s case, Middle Eastern Muslims did not benefit—the U.S. has been making war on them for 16 years. America did not benefit—we’re suffering the casualties and trillions in costs from the wars, as well as degradation of our liberties in the name of security. The only beneficiary was Israel—her enemies have been neutralized one by one, courtesy America, in fulfillment of the Greater Israel plan, with Iran reputedly next on the hit list.

That’s the main who; let’s talk about the how.

(1) How were the Twin Towers destroyed?

Within alternative media are three major schools of thought about this. One is nano-thermite, largely advocated by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Another is Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), whose foremost advocate is Dr. Judy Wood. The third is nuclear devices, which I and a few others support. Let me be clear: I have friends in all three camps, and differing opinions on this matter don’t impede our friendships.

I’ve laid out why I believe the Twin Towers’ collapse was a nuclear event in an extensive blog post. To minimize redundancy, I’ll shrink this to a “top ten” list:


1. Thyroid cancer occurs at above-average frequency in 9/11 first responders more than any other type of cancer (see full post for citations). This is a signature of nuclear bombs; they emit iodine-131, which collects in the thyroid, often causing cancer. (This is why some people keep potassium iodide tablets on hand—to protect their thyroid glands in case of a nuclear attack.)

2. World Trade Center dust samples examined by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found Uranium, Strontium, Barium, Thorium, and other products of nuclear fission, in high concentrations and correlations that only an atomic blast could explain. Although the Survey avoided calling attention to the significance, William Tahil vetted it in his pioneering 2006 book Ground Zero: The Nuclear Demolition of the World Trade Centre. (The phrase “ground zero,” incidentally, had only been applied to nuclear detonation sites prior to 9/11.)

3. There was molten steel underneath the rubble of the World Trade Center, whose fires kept burning for over three months. Extraordinary heat is yet another signature of a nuclear bomb.

(Note: I’m aware that molten steel was seen at a corner of the South Tower before its collapse; I don’t doubt that pre-planted explosives were in the Towers, probably including the incendiary thermite, but I don’t believe these explosives were what destroyed the WTC. To clarify, each Tower had six basement levels, and the thesis of my full post—which I had excellent assistance with—is that each Tower was destroyed by a suitcase nuke positioned at the lowest point in either building: the services pits beneath elevator 50. This was the only elevator that ran the full length of either Tower, and the only elevator whose service pits were carved into the bedrock beneath the World Trade Center. This location would make the ideal “launching pad” for a nuke, as the bedrock would contain the sideways and downward force of a nuclear explosion, which would follow the path of least resistance up through the shaft. See the full post for diagrams.)

4. The Towers did not simply “fall,” they exploded, throwing chunks of steel weighing multiple tons hundreds of feet. Check, for example, this piece that embedded itself in the American Express Building across the street:

No exotic weapons are needed to explain this. A nuclear bomb is the most powerful explosive known.

5. The Towers’ inner contents were vaporized: no furniture, filing cabinets (except one), computers, or toilets survived. All turned into dust. Even the buildings’ concrete became dust, instead of falling as chunks of debris. The vaporization, of course, included the people inside (whole bodies that were found belonged to people who jumped before the Towers disintegrated). Not only is a nuclear bomb the most powerful explosive known, its blast—unlike conventional explosives—endures for several seconds, enabling it to inflict considerably more damage.

6. At the times of the two Tower “collapses,” seismographs at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, recorded enormous off-the-chart spikes consistent with huge explosions.

This shot of the South Tower exploding caught a huge singular upward burst of energy.

Likewise, when the North Tower explodes, a great, singular flash of flame is visible inside the building:

7. A nuclear blast explains the damage to the rest of the World Trade Center. Buildings 5 and 7 suffered enormous fires, and building 6 was cratered out. These phenomena could not have begun before the Towers’ destruction; otherwise, videos of the burning Towers would have shown additional smoke plumes, and cameras would have panned to the blazes.

Nuclear blasts originating at the lowest levels of the Twin Towers may provide the answer. Underground the World Trade Center was interconnected by pipes, not only for sewage, but a 3-foot-wide storm water drainage system.

Any building’s place at greatest risk for flooding is its lowest point. For the Twin Towers, this would have been Elevator 50’s service pits. From here flood water would be pumped through pipes to the 36-inch storm drain. Thus atomic blasts here would not only follow the path of least resistance through Elevator 50’s shaft, but through the 36-inch storm water drain, traveling through the underground pipes and shooting up through buildings 5, 6 and 7, igniting them. Falling debris could not have caused the raging internal fires seen in the smaller buildings; edifices outside the World Trade Center (American Express Building, Winter Garden Atrium) were heavily impacted by debris, but they did not catch fire. THEY WERE NOT CONNECTED TO THE WTC’S UNDERGROUND DRAINAGE SYSTEM.

Please see my full post for elaboration and documentation of the above point.

8. On 9/11, New Yorkers fled two terrifying dust clouds that engulfed the area surrounding the WTC. Anyone who watches videos of nuclear bombs detonating will see that they create sprawling ground-level clouds. Although building demolitions also routinely make dust clouds, the 9/11 ones seemed to have had a life of their own.

(A noteworthy observation in this film is that as people flee the cloud behind them, smoke is flowing up from the sewer drains in front of them. Since the World Trade Center’s underground pipes ultimately emptied into New York City’s sewer, this is further evidence of the secondary effects of an underground nuke. Continuous flow of nuclear smoke from the sewers might account for the “toasted cars” later noticed along the side streets.)

9. CIA asset Susan Lindauer (second cousin to Andrew Card, George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff) has stated that U.S. intelligence received advance warnings of the 9/11 attacks (her whistle-blowing eventually led to her being sent to a federal prison). According to Lindauer, the advance warning the CIA received included the destruction of the World Trade Center by a “mini-nuke.”3

10. In his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism, Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted:


Two days after 9/11, NBC’s Tom Brokaw interviewed Netanyahu, who said:

Even though Netanyahu revised “nuclear” to “conventional,” one must ask how he knew the bomb’s specific yield. In fact, how did Bibi know it was a bomb at all? Supposedly plane crashes had brought the Towers down.

A common objection to the nuclear hypothesis: “Where are the post-9/11 Geiger counter readings showing lots of radiation in New York City?” The answer: not all nuclear bombs discharge large amounts of radiation. Most use a combination of nuclear fission and fusion; if the fission is high, fallout (radiation) will be high; but if fission is low compared to fusion, fallout will be low. During the Cold War, the United States began developing tactical nuclear weapons, also known as “battlefield nukes.” In today’s advanced technology, these are often called “minimal residual radiation” weapons (MRRs). Obviously, in a battlefield situation, a low-radiation weapon is desired; otherwise it could harm one’s own army.

What types of nuclear warheads does Israel stockpile? Although this is an ironclad state secret, it should be obvious that Israel would emphasize “battlefield” nukes. In war with its neighbors, it wouldn’t want radiation blowback to Tel Aviv. A modern suitcase nuke is small enough to carry in a backpack.

(2) What struck the Towers?

When I first heard of the “no planes” theory (no planes hit the Twin Towers) my reaction was something like: “Of all the stupid %@!&*! There must have been a million people in New York City who saw that plane hit the South Tower in real time. Anyone who believes in ‘no planes’ is embracing cognitive dissonance that is designed to discredit the whole 9/11 Movement!”

However, as I examined facts, my position began evolving. For one thing, there was little evidence of Flight 93 at the Shanksville crash site:

Unlike other airliner crash sites, which are littered with wreckage and bodes, the ground swallowed up Flight 93. Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller said: “This crash was different. There was no wreckage, no bodies, and no noise.”5

Likewise, at the Pentagon, there was stunning lack of evidence for a plane:

Pentagon witness April Gallup:

Supposedly Flight 77 pulled out of a steep descent (a maneuver impossible for a commercial jetliner) and flew perfectly level to the ground (not even scuffing it) and smashed into the Pentagon’s first floor, its aluminum fuselage ramming through three of the reinforced concrete rings:

Major General Albert Stubblebine:

Given the doubts about planes crashing at Shanksville and the Pentagon, might the 9/11 perpetrators have used the same modus operandi at the Twin Towers? Was it possible that no real planes hit them?

There are, in fact, two substantial reasons why Flights 11 and 175 could not have been what struck the World Trace Center.

First, the object that hit the South Tower was traveling 590 miles per hour,6 whereas a Boeing 767’s maximum operating speed at ground level is about 420 mph.Now, it is absolutely true that at high altitude, a 767 can cruise above 500 mph (due to the thinner atmosphere) and that if it suddenly dove, it could maintain such velocity. The problem: when a Boeing reaches ground altitude, it becomes uncontrollable at these speeds. Pilots for 9/11 Truth explains it in this 6-minute video:

See also the detailed affidavit by veteran pilot John Lear, son of Bill Lear, inventor of the Lear Jet.

9/11’s success required perfect execution. Both objects hitting the Twin Towers scored bull’s-eyes. But let’s say whoever was piloting Flight 175 slightly veered, and only clipped the South Tower with his left wing. What would have happened? The plane would have crashed elsewhere in New York City; but more importantly, the Tower could not have been destroyed. Regardless of what demolition theory one ascribes to—nano-thermite, directed energy, or nukes—the 9/11 perpetrators would not have dared collapse the Tower on the pretext that a wing grazed it. The plan required perfection; misses couldn’t be tolerated. But no pilots, however good, could guarantee bull’s-eyes at the given speeds.

Second is the impossible physics displayed in news footage of Flight 175 vanishing into the South Tower, its fragile aluminum wings and tail slicing through the 14-inch-thick steel columns “like a hot knife through butter.” For those new to 9/11 Truth, there are innumerable posts and videos about this; I’ll embed a slo-mo clip here:

We’re watching an impossibility. A jetliner’s aluminum wings and tail would have broken off on hitting the Tower’s steel columns. Here’s footage of a real airliner crash; the wings are sliced off by wooden telephone poles:

Jetliner noses are so fragile they’ve been crushed by bird impacts. Here’s a screen shot from the May 7, 2015 Telegraph:

Many more examples of bird-damaged airliner noses can be found online. Regardless of speed, such noses could have not have performed as “battering rams” on 9/11; they would have crumpled upon impacting the steel columns.

Many believe all the images of Flight 175 hitting the South Tower were clever CGIs (computer-generated images) created after the fact. However, Richard Hall has produced a compelling video refuting that. He made a computerized scale model of New York City; he then took the 26 highest-quality videos of 175 hitting the Tower. In all 26 videos, filmed from many angles, the object followed the precise same trajectory. This indicates a real object hit the Tower. I won’t embed his 35-minute video, but click here if you wish to view.

What, then, struck the Towers? We are pretty much reduced to two options. Hall concludes it was a missile shrouded in a plane’s image.

1. The Missile Hypothesis

A cruise missile would resolve all the problems a plane presents: speed, accuracy and penetration. A missile can be guided with precision to a target; is not disturbed by the “G-forces” that stress a winged plane; and a missile’s nose is hardened for penetration.

Many will rightly object that the plane footage was corroborated by countless New Yorkers who witnessed a plane strike the South Tower. However, there’s an explanation far more credible than it may at first sound: holographic cloaking. The Air Force developed such technology years ago, and fortunately people made screen shots of the web page before it was taken down. It demonstrates that the Air Force was capable of creating a 3-dimensional image of a plane, in broad daylight, so realistic that it could deceive enemy antiaircraft gunners.

Quoting the Air Force’s own description:



Precision projection of 3-D visual images into a selected area

Supports PSYOP and strategic deception management

Provides deception and cloaking against optical sensors

But could the American military have been persuaded to launch missiles against American targets? While it’s possible, given the darkness of the “military-industrial complex,” the Israeli military would have had no hesitation. Remember their attack on the USS Liberty.

But would Israel have had such technology? The declassified 1987 Defense Department paper Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations noted that the Israeli firm El-Op was, back then, already developing holographic technology with “stealth applications.”

How could Israel have launched cruise missiles against us? Israel began replacing her 1970s-era submarine fleet with new Dolphin-class submarines, capable of firing cruise missiles, in 1999.8 In 2000, the U.S. Navy observed these subs test-firing missiles in the Indian Ocean.9

The plane-shaped damage on the sides of the burning towers would likely be from charges planted by the notorious Israeli art students before 9/11; the missile could have set these off.

2. The Drone Hypothesis

Last summer, during his book tour, I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Bollyn, one of the best 9/11 researchers. After Chris completed his PowerPoint presentation, he took audience questions, and I asked his opinion of the “no planes” theory. Chris said that on images of Flight 175’s underside, there appears to be a “pod” or missile; its nose lights up when it meets the building. (This is much discussed in the 9/11 movement. Such a missile could not have been attached to Flight 175 without being noticed by Logan Airport maintenance crews.)

Above: the “pod”

Chris asked: if it was only a hologram, why would they bother including a missile’s image? His conclusion: missile-carrying drones struck the Towers.

The drone hypothesis is consistent with Operation Northwoods, a 1962 Pentagon plan to stage a “false flag” in order to justify invading Cuba. It involved swapping drones mid-air for a passenger planes. If, in fact, 9/11 was an updated version of Operation Northwoods, it might explain why Flights 11 and 175 came so close to each other (“nearly colliding”) over Stewart Air Force Base.

This path-crossing might have marked the ideal time to launch drones, which could have followed the planes tightly to avoid radar detection.

Drones could also resolve the (relatively minor) aircraft debris photographed near the Pentagon and World Trade Center after 9/11.

However, the drone hypothesis presents its own problems. Wouldn’t a 767-sized drone run into the same issue of high-speed controllability as a 767 passenger plane? And could a drone’s wings and tail slice through 14-inch steel any more easily than a jetliner’s?

Perhaps the answer to Chris’s question—If it was only a hologram, why would they bother including an image of a missile?—is that the missile was real, but the plane was the image cloaking it.

I’m open to both possibilities—missiles or drones. I’ll note that drones somewhat reduce Israel’s degree of involvement, since an Israeli sub could launch cruise missiles, but not drones.

Incidentally, the Northeast Air Defense Sector did receive a report from the FAA’s Boston Center, saying Flight 11 had not hit the North Tower but was still airborne and heading south. You can hear it, as recorded live, in the documentary Intercepted by Pilots for 9/11 Truth (I’ve embedded the relevant 1-minute clip):

Although some believe this message was an error, or even a phantom call to distract fighters from Flight 77 (then approaching Washington), it confirms there was official belief on 9/11 that Flight 11 was not what hit the Towers.

(3) What happened to the original planes and passengers?

Not only were the alleged 9/11 hijackers incompetent pilots, but several later turned up alive.
As a result, we in the Truth Movement has been running some scenarios like this:
THEREFORE there were no hijackers on the planes at all;
THEREFORE the planes were electronically hijacked;
THEREFORE the calls from the planes were faked, probably by passengers and crew who were hired as crisis actors;
THEREFORE the planes probably landed at military bases; the crisis actors were paid handsomely and given new identities;
OR the calls were not actually from the passengers themselves, but CIA agents digitally posing as passengers, using voice print technology, etc.

However, although I have spent much time seriously exploring these possibilities, and still entertain some questions regarding Flight 11, I now believe these are mostly rabbit holes. I started looking at 9/11 from the viewpoint: “If this was an Israeli operation, how would they execute it?” Here’s my conclusion.

I believe there were hijackers on 9/11. But they weren’t Arabs. They were elite Israeli special ops, most probably Danny Lewin’s unit Sayeret Matkal, using Arab IDs (except for Lewin). Not even Mossad would be entrusted with an operation of such military caliber. Darker men who could pass for Arabs would have been selected for the mission.

Unlike Hani Hanjour and the rest of the Arab patsies, who couldn’t control little Cessnas at 65 nauts at flight-training schools, these special ops would have had months of training on Boeing 757s and 767s, plenty of which were in El Al’s (Israel’s) fleet:

They would have practiced cockpit invasion countless times, probably using a Boeing in an Israeli hangar, using real people play-acting as the “American pilots and crews” who would have to be overwhelmed. “Good work; that took nine seconds; let’s see if we can get it down to eight.”

How would Israeli commandos invade the cockpit so quickly? Mary Ellen Moore, co-producer of the movie I scripted, ShadowRing, was a career flight attendant. She tells me tells me cockpit doors were standardly locked by 2001 to guard against hijacking. The attendants did keep a cockpit key in a secret location in case of emergency. I recently asked Mary Ellen if the key-lock set was unique for each Boeing cockpit, or was it universal? She wasn’t sure, so she asked a pilot friend, who told her that, up until 9/11, it was universal.

I think, then, we can answer how the hijackers breached the cockpits. They had keys, or copies of keys, provided by El-Al. As we have said, everything on 9/11 had to go like clockwork and be virtually guaranteed. They certainly weren’t going to struggle trying to kick in a locked cockpit door, or (as some in mainstream media suggested) holding a box-cutter to a flight attendant’s throat, saying something like, “Open the door or the broad here gets it!” What if the pilots said “No!”? Furthermore, in hijacking situations, all pilots were trained to immediately type in a 4-digit code that alerted air traffic control. None of the pilots on any of the airliners did that. I don’t think they had time.

We know through the calls from AA 11 that two hijackers had been in the front row of First Class. (Having people seated up front was presumably standard on all these operations.) They probably waited until the flight attendants were distracted (or more likely, they created a distraction; Danny Lewin back in Row 9: “Oh, Miss, I feel sick!”) Once inside the cockpit, they would have killed the pilots instantly. (Remember, Lewin reportedly “was trained to kill terrorists with a pen or a credit card, or just his bare hands”) and this presumably held true for the rest of the Sayeret Matkal. There is no evidence that there were struggles in the cockpits of Flights 11, 175 or 77. The hijackers would not have tried to “cut their throats with box-cutters,” which would have splattered the controls with blood. The pilots would have been killed (or rendered unconscious) instantly with the best device Sayeret Matkal had, such as an Epipen-style injector.

The hijackers would have removed the dead pilots from their seats, and taken control of the planes, fully familiar with Boeings from hundreds of hours of practice with El-Al jets. One hijacker would likely have been designated the expert pilot, with one or two others capable of backing him up.

I don’t think the passenger calls were faked. I think they wanted those calls made to establish the narrative that hijackings were under way. Here’s an amazing sentence from the September 21, 2001 London Telegraph: “Accounts from the other doomed planes indicate that the hijackers encouraged people to call their families and tell them what was happening.”10 Say what? What evil hijackers would encourage people to call their families?

This would also explain why the hijackers weren’t patrolling the aisles. They wanted passengers feeling safe enough to start picking up those air phones and calling in order to establish the “Muslim hijacking” narrative.

I want to add something here about cell phones. Some calls came from cell phones instead of air phones, and we have been told this was not possible in the existing 2001 technology.

However, my flight attendant friend Mary Ellen Moore reports that in late 1998, she and a pilot were flying, as passengers, at high altitude over Nebraska. The pilot opened his ATT Flip Phone and called his wife. After chatting for a while, he handed the phone to Mary Ellen, who also spoke with his wife, until a flight attendant came past and scolded them.

Mary Ellen tells me that things are different today; her smart phone shuts off at altitudes of a couple thousand feet. But she believes we are underrating the connectivity of cell phones years ago, which was rarely tested, since their use was forbidden on passengers flights.

I’ll quote The New York Times, which is of course a mainstream source, but this was less than two weeks after 9/11, before there was any Truth Movement to rebut:


”The fact of the matter is that cell phones can work in almost all phases of a commercial flight,” said Marvin Sirbu, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. ”An excess of caution prevents us from doing so, of course, because we are so worried about the safety of air travel.”11 [emphasis added]

In any event, while many 9/11 cell phone calls undoubtedly didn’t connect, it appears from the record that some did. These, along with the air phone calls, gave the hijackers sufficient “narrative.”

This narrative had been progressively established in the days leading up to 9/11:

In Germany, Mohammed Atta had been a shy architectural student; according to his family, he was timid around girls and hated to fly. But a very different Atta appeared in America. U.S. journalist Daniel Hopsicker, in his book Welcome to Terrorland, cited testimony that “Atta,” in Florida, was a party animal who loved to drink, snort cocaine, and listen to rock ‘n’ roll. According to eyewitnesses, on the Friday before 9/11, Atta and two other alleged hijackers went to Shukum’s Oyster Bar in Hollywood, Florida, where they drank heavily, played video games and cursed. They argued with the manager over their bill, which Atta paid with a $100 bill, saying, “Of course I can pay the bill. I’m an airline pilot.”12

On Sept. 14, 2001, CBS News reported:


“They were talking about what a bad place America is. They said ‘Wait ‘til tomorrow. America is going to see bloodshed,’” said John Kap, manager of the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack’s Sports Bar. . . .

In Daytona Beach, Kap said he told FBI investigators the men in his bar spent $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks, paying with credit cards. Kap said he gave the FBI credit card receipts, photocopied driver’s licenses, a business card left by one man and a copy of the Quranthe sacred book of Islamthat was left at the bar.13

We were consistently told that Atta and his fellow hijackers were Islamic fundamentalists, motivated to die for their faith. Yet their lifestyle completely contradicted this thesis. What devout Muslim brings his Koran to a strip club? What operatives on a secret mission call attention to themselves by loudly arguing over bills and leaving behind their business cards? These facts do not fit the official story—they do, however, fit someone planting a trail of misleading evidence.

That trail went right up to the morning up 9/11; a car attributed to the hijackers was found at Boston’s Logan Airport. Inside: a Koran and a flight training manual. What were investigators to conclude from these clues?

“A Koran. Hmmm . . . These guys must have been Muslims!”

“A flight training manual . . . Aha! Flight training school!”

“Now, a Koran with a flight training manual . . . Eureka! These were Muslims at a flight training school!”

Like the unburned hijacker passport later found outside the World Trade Center, Atta’s luggage all too conveniently didn’t make it onto Flight 11. If was from this luggage that the FBI so quickly learned the “identities” of the 19 hijackers. (Of course, 9/11 Truthers have always asked why Atta would bother bringing luggage for a trip on which he planned to commit suicide.)

But I think we’re ending the play at Act One if we stop there, and insist no hijackers ever boarded the aircraft, and that no hijackings occurred. Israeli operatives would have boarded using the same fake/stolen Arab IDs found in Atta’s luggage. Carrying out the hijacking itself, prompting numerous calls from flight attendants and passengers, would have been the culmination that all these planted clues led up to.

Let’s not forget the Charlie Hebdo incident, where gunmen who appeared to be skilled military operatives, their faces concealed by masks, went into the street shouting “Allahu Akbar” for the cameras, to make sure everyone would know they were “Muslims.”

I believe 9/11 was parallel to this incident—not Muslims, but real, living operatives nonetheless.

A Disservice

I think some of us in the Truth Movement have done a disservice to the passengers and crews on these flights by turning victims of the Israelis into perpetrators. (It’s kind of like saying the sailors on the USS Liberty conspired in the attack on themselves.) The “Inside Job” paradigm has led some to say the 9/11 passengers faked the phone calls—or even that the people never existed.

Shortly after 9/11, at the Winchester, Mass., church I was attending, during the post-service coffee I struck up a conversation with a lady who turned out to be a flight attendant. She told me how she’d lost one of her best friends on one of the 9/11 flights.

On Flight 175 was Garnet “Ace” Baily, a professional hockey scout. “Ace” had played for the Boston Bruins; I can still remember him coming off the bench in Game 1 of the 1972 Stanley Cup Finals, scoring a goal to break a 5-5 tie and win it for Boston. “Ace” Bailey attempted four phone calls to his wife from Flight 175. No one has seen him since 9/11. Yes, “Ace” was a real person. And I think any serious researcher will acknowledge that the same holds true for the other passengers and crew members.

This segues to the next aberration: that the crews and passengers were real, but served as crisis actors, collaborating with intelligence services to make fake phone calls describing a non-existent hijacking. It is sometimes presumed that such were handsomely paid, assigned new identities, and moved to exotic locations to live out the rest of their days.

But this doesn’t withstand scrutiny either. No one gets a million bucks and a new identity just for making a 30-second phone call to their home—and most on those planes didn’t make calls at all.

Furthermore, what if some had remorse after seeing images of the Twin Towers collapse and said: “Screw their money! I didn’t know I was part of this!”? Could 9/11’s architects risk some supposedly-dead flight attendant being “resurrected,” returning to their home town and family, and being interviewed by the local newspaper? The whole plot would have collapsed. No, everyone on 9/11 had to die—except the hijackers.

So where did the passengers and planes go?

If Israeli special ops flew the Boeings, but didn’t crash them into the buildings, where did they take them? I don’t think it was “American military bases.” Not for an Israeli operation. That would open a Pandora’s Box: how to dispose of the bodies and planes, and the risk of witnesses.

There was only one place to take them: out into the Atlantic for a rendezvous with an Israeli ship, very probably that missile-firing sub. That’s where the planes were headed anyway, if we presume they flew past their targets, be it the WTC or Pentagon—the nearby Atlantic.

Some may ask, “But why weren’t they tracked out there by the FAA and NORAD?” My answer would be: if they went to military bases, why didn’t the FAA and NORAD track them there? Both agencies experienced much confusion on 9/11 due to all the ongoing drills, to say nothing of the Israeli-linked software running their computers. And as we’ve seen, the FAA did still track Flight 11 south after it allegedly struck the World Trade Center.

The passengers and crews had to be immediately silenced after the “crashes.” This would almost certainly be the time when they died. How? Not with bullets or explosives, not on an airborne jet. Only one solution would have killed the passengers while keeping the Israeli hijackers alive: a lethal gas.

We know that on both Flight 1114 and Flight 93, the hijackers claimed to have a bomb which they displayed (on Flight 93, Todd Beamer told his wife the “bomb” was strapped to a hijacker’s waist belt.15) In a call to his father, Peter Hanson on Flight 175 also reported of the hijackers: “They said they have a bomb.”16 So it appears that a standard plan was being followed. However, I don’t believe these were really bombs (which would not have served the hijackers’ interests), nor do I believe they were merely props. I suggest they were gas canisters awaiting use.

I propose this scenario: once the “crash” occurs (World Trade Center, Pentagon), the hijacker carrying the “bomb” (gas canister) goes to the cockpit and opens the door. He activates the canister like a grenade, hurls it into the cabin, then enters the cockpit, locking the door behind him. Who knows what this gas might have been; it must have been fast-acting. Cyanide gas, for example, can render victims unconscious within seconds before killing them, and in a pressurized cabin, the gas would quickly impact everyone.

Meantime, the hijackers would have been sealed safe inside the cockpits, wearing their oxygen masks conveniently provided by United and American. My guess is they made water landings near the surfaced sub (or perhaps some other Israeli vessel). They would have rehearsed such landings in their El-Al practice jet(s). The sub would pick them up with a small craft, after the hijackers popped open a cockpit window, and departed wearing their life preservers—again, nicely provided by United and American. In the meantime, each airliner would sink to the bottom of the ocean: perfect mass tombs—for just like the Maine, the Lusitania, and (the intended fate of) the Liberty, the sea bottom is the ideal place to conceal a false-flag crime.

Dick Cheney served as commander-in-chief that day (Bush having been consigned to do something his own speed—reading the book The Pet Goat at an elementary school). In a role paralleling Lyndon Baines Johnson during Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty, Cheney may have created a “safe space” for the Israeli rendezvous so that no U.S. fighter jets would intrude and observe. Air Force veteran Field McConnell, who appears a lot on alt media shows, says 11, 175 and 77 were all destroyed in an ocean sector called Whiskey 386, a military training zone 60 miles off the Virginia coast, but he says that 93 had to be destroyed over land.17 Although McConnell and I have differing outlooks on 9/11, we are very close on this particular.

Here’s a clip from the 1965 James Bond movie Thunderball, which was about the theft of two nuclear bombs. The theft occurs by hijacking a plane; the crew are killed with a gas. The hijacker then lands the plane in the ocean; he makes a rendezvous with a ship; the plane itself sinks in the ocean. Of course, I put little stock in Hollywood, but it’s interesting that the clip embodies several elements similar to what I’ve just described:

Lest anyone suggest it, this article was not “inspired” by Thunderball. But art often mimics reality. Strangely, Thunderball was the only Bond film to get remade, in 1983, as Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery summoned out of his long “Bond retirement.” In the new version, Spectre’s nuclear scheme was called “Allah’s Tears,” a name befitting what the Middle East has experienced. The remake appeared 18 years after the original and 18 years before 9/11.

What happened to Flight 93?

Flight 93 departed Newark more than 40 minutes late. I suspect that most analysts are correct in conjecturing that its intended target was the White House. A dual attack on the Twin Towers, followed by a dual attack on the Pentagon and White House, would have been ideal combinations to ramp up Americans for war.

Flight 93 was evidently shot down, not merely plunged by the pilots into the smoking Shanksville crater. There was a widely scattered debris field; one engine was found more than 600 yards from the infamous hole.18

I’ve clipped some of this collected original news footage indicating Flight 93 was shot down:

Cheney acknowledges giving the order:

However, if Flight 93 was downed, I do not believe it was for the reason commonly given (save the White House). I now believe, based on the collective phone calls, that there really was a “let’s roll” attempt to recover the cockpit, but with one difference: they were not retaking it from Muslim terrorists, but from Israeli special ops. Indications are that the passengers overwhelmed the terrorist guarding the cockpit and had begun breaching it. Remember, the flight attendants had a key of their own.

(Note: one reason I believe the 9/11 planes were physically—not electronically— hijacked, is Flight 93’s behavior. When the passengers revolted, the plane began left-right, up-down motions to knock them off their feet. This sounds much more like a live pilot at the controls than a remote system.)

Let’s conjecture what possible scenario might have unfolded had 93 not been destroyed: the cockpit is retaken; the hijackers are subdued. One of the passengers, Donald Greene, was a licensed pilot. Let’s say Greene and the flight attendants, with coaching from air traffic controllers, were able to make a rough but successful landing.

Now what happens? The hijackers are arrested. Michael Chertoff may have succeeded in sending the “dancing Israelis” home, but no way could he have released the hijackers themselves. And once it was proven they were Israelis, not Muslims, 9/11’s entire outcome would have changed. There would have been no long succession of U.S. wars against Middle Eastern nations. Israel’s status with the U.S., including its billions of dollars in annual assistance from American taxpayers, would have been completely jeopardized.

Once it became apparent that 93 was at risk for a successful passenger revolt, Cheney ordered it shot down—not to protect the White House, but to ensure 9/11’s success. He may even shot it down after consulting Netanyahu, who would have told him to obliterate the plane. After all, the loss of four special ops was a small price to pay compared to the all the gains Israel would reap from 9/11. Undoubtedly, the Sayeret Matkal members who partook in 9/11 had been forewarned that, if something went wrong that day, their lives might be at risk.

The infamous Shanksville “hole” may have been from the discarded missile or drone that had been intended to attack the White House, the real plane wreckage being widely scattered.

The F-16 pilot(s) who shot down 93 would have been told to keep silent in the interest of national security. And Cheney would have known that, if the shoot-down ever became publicly exposed, he had the best of excuses: “Alas, it was a hard choice, but I did it for America.”

I would never call 9/11 a “simple” operation. But on a relative scale, I believe it was simpler than we thought—especially when we understand it was, essentially, not an American “inside job” but an Israeli “outside job”: (1) two Israeli suitcase nukes in the basements of the Twin Towers; (2) explosives planted by the “Israeli art students” at the level of the “airplane strikes”; (3) either drones or missiles hitting all targets; the latter launched from one or perhaps even two Israeli Dolphin-class submarines; (4) real hijackings, executed by elite Israeli special forces, who successfully sunk the planes at sea, with one exception—the botched-up Flight 93, which had to be shot down. Had the operatives on 93 played their cards right, they would have stayed in their seats and done nothing, for the damage to the World Trade Center and Pentagon was already enough to send America down the path of endless wars for Israel.

Always remember: It was not “dancing FBI agents” or “dancing Navy Seals” or “dancing flight attendants” who were caught high-fiving each other, photographing themselves, and celebrating as thousands of Americans died in agony at the World Trade Center.

Update. July 28, 2017.

It’s been almost a month since I published this post. I have received encouraging emails from three pilots, including two who were scheduled to fly in Boeings on 9/11. Both have long disbelieved the government’s official story. I also heard from a gentleman who wrote:

One thing I have yet to see mentioned is this: Air National Guard Senior Leadership were away at a Senior Leadership conference at the time of 911. This left a majority of Air Guard units under the temporary command of younger officers. I know because I was one of them in Sioux City, IA. How’s that for additional planning by those involved? This added more confusion to the day.

A few things have occurred which may or may not be coincidental:
— Since posting the article, William Tahil’s book Ground Zero: The Nuclear Demolition of the World Trade Centre, has been scrubbed from the Internet. Clicking the hyperlink I originally gave now only results in a message “This account has been suspended.” I have attempted to contact Mr. Tahil in hopes of seeing the book reposted on the Web. In the meantime, someone found the book on the Wayback Machine, and kindly sent me the link:
— Of the seven radio shows/podcasts I have done about this post, five reported significant tech issues (computers crashed or under live attack, Skype malfunctioning mid-interview, and, in the case of the Rense Radio Network, their phone system going down during our Shell Games broadcast, and staying down for days afterwards).
—On the same day that I learned Tahil’s book had vanished, Amazon raised the selling price of my book Truth Is a Lonely Warrior from $15.76 to $19.25. Although Amazon does vary its prices according to algorithms, this book had been selling at approximately $16 for many months; the abrupt increase should not have resulted from a simple shift in a sales algorithm. I then also realized that Amazon had boosted the prices of my other books Tornado in a Junkyard and The Case against Darwin (which it had sold at steep discounts for years) to full cover price. (The price increases do not up my royalty from Amazon, they just make the books harder to buy.)

Revising my proposed 9/11 scenario. I had further discussions with my friend Mary Ellen Moore, the career flight attendant who I’ve already referenced in this post. Regarding my thesis that the 9/11 planes may have rendezvoused with an Israeli sub in the Atlantic, she said that while it could certainly be done intact, an ocean landing risks damage to a jetliner. What if parts broke off? What if the plane ruptured after sinking, and a body washed ashore? I had to agree with her; if 9/11 was a perfectly planned crime, trying to land four jetliners in the ocean, some 60 miles off the Virginia coast, would not be ideal.

But our Atlantic scenario wasn’t over. Mary Ellen thought it significant that all four 9/11 planes, departing the East Coast, had California destinations. This means all four were heavily loaded with fuel.

Why did the hijackers insist on California flights? The mainstream explanation has always been that they wanted lots of burning fuel to destroy their targets with. This, of course, isn’t true, as we know jet fuel did not demolish the World Trade Center; nor does it appear that any 9/11 targets were even hit by airliners.

So why did the hijackers want planes with maximum fuel? Why not steal planes that were simply headed for Chicago or Atlanta? Was it because they were planning to escape by making long-distance flights? With all eyes on the disasters in New York and Washington, few would pay attention to the fading radar of planes heading far out to sea, their transponders off. The hijackers would have needed to navigate around Hurricane Erin, which was off New York’s coast, probably by flying southeast, then turning due east.

I believe an ideal place to land and sink the planes would have been the calm waters of the Sargasso Sea, strongly associated with the infamous “Bermuda Triangle.” Because the Sargasso Sea is hemmed in by four surrounding currents, objects drift into it, but nothing drifts out of it. Thus here, even if the planes broke up after sinking them, no remnants would ever wash up on continental shores. Here the hijackers could have rendezvoused with an Israeli ship, much better equipped to pick them up than a submarine.

Another possibility Mary Ellen raised: the planes had enough fuel to reach a refueling pit stop like the Azores. When you come down to it, the safest place for Israelis to land a hijacked airliner would be a military base in Israel. The only hitch: they would need to refuel. Actually, Boeing 767s can, and do, make non-stop flights from New York to Tel Aviv. But a 757 cannot. And even a 767, if California-bound, might lack adequate fuel.

WikiLeaks has shed light on the CIA’s secret use of Lajes Air Base in the Azores. The air distance from Boston to Los Angeles is about 2,596 miles; from New York to the Azores is about 2,424 miles. Here is a New York Times piece with an interesting publication date about a low-on-fuel airliner that rerouted to Lajes Air Base.

On 9/11, of course, American airspace was shut down. According to Wikipedia, about 500 international flights were forced to turn around or divert to other countries. As planes from Europe returned east, seeking rerouted destinations, it would have created unprecedented confusion on the Atlantic flight path map. The 9/11 planes, also heading east, could have blended in with these other flights. Dick Cheney could have instructed a locale such as Lajes Air Base to assist any incoming jetliners that needed refueling, no questions asked.

From the Azores, the 9/11 planes would have avoided European and Mediterranean airspace, and could have flown at high altitude over sub-Saharan African countries, where it would now be night, drawing little if any notice. From here they could have crossed into Saudi Arabia and, with Saudi consent, flown directly to Israel. Something like this:

As with other proposals in this post, I’m certainly not insisting on these Sargasso/Azores scenarios. I’ve found no records indicating that Lajes Air Base assisted with refueling on 9/11, and the longer the Israelis kept the jets airborne, the more risks they would have been taking. But I think Mary Ellen’s point about the hijackers wanting heavily fueled jets, for the purpose a lengthy getaway, merits strong consideration.

For further updating to this article, see the follow-up post Conversations with an Airline Pilot about 9/11.


  1. Sara Leibovich-Dar, “Up in Smoke,” Haaretz, November 21, 2001,
  2. Paul Sperry, “Lewin: Flight 11’s Unsung Hero?” WorldNetDaily,
  3. “CIA asset Susan Lindauer: Entire US Intelligence Community Knew 9/11 Imminent,” Shadow Citizen,, 29-minute mark.
  4. Benjamin Netanyahu, Fighting Terrorism (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995), p. 125.
  5. “Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11: The Mysterious Plane Crash Site without a Plane,” 911Blogger,
  6. “United Airlines Flight 175,” Wikipedia,
  7. John Lear, “Ghostplane,”
  8. “Israel Submarine Capabilities,” NTI, July 30, 2015,
  9. Ibid.
  10. Philip Delves Broughton, “Last words from Flight 11: ‘I can see water and buildings. Oh my God!’” The Telegraph, Sept 21, 2001,
  11. Simon Romero, “After the Attacks: Communications; New Perspective on the Issue of Cell Phone Use in Planes,” New York Times, September 14, 2001,
  12. “When Our World Changed Forever,” Guardian, September 16, 2001,
  13. “Focus on Florida,” CBS News, September 14, 2001,
  14. Gail Sheehy, “Stewardess ID’d Hijackers Early, Transcripts Show,” The New York Observer, February 16, 2004,
  15. Charles Lane, Don Phillips and David Snyder, “A Sky Filled With Chaos, Uncertainty and True Heroism,” The Washington Post, September 17, 2001,
  16. Philip Sherwell, “9/11: Voices from the Doomed Planes,” The Telegraph, September 10, 2011,
  17. “Abel Danger’s Field McConnell on 9/11 & the Boeing Uninterruptible Autopilot,” The Richie Allen Show, March 3, 2017, starting about 41:50 mark,